In recent years, the demand for composite boards and panels has greatly increased, particularly in the furniture fabrication industry. In a typical application, a paperboard or wood panel may be laminated with a printed paper sheet, such as an artificial wood grain design, for use on the interior and exterior surfaces of a piece of furniture, such as a desk, bookshelf or table. For example, the backing board behind a shelving unit may typically be made of such a composite panel. In these types of composite boards or panels, the paperboard or wood panel provides a relatively rough surface for lamination of the printed paper sheet. Undulations, pits, cracks, and/or holes in the underlying paperboard or wood surface tend to translate through to the overlying printed paper sheet. These imperfections reflect the light cast on the surface of the printed paper sheet and obscure the customer's view and appreciation of the product.
It is known in the art to prepare multi-layered composite boards comprised of a variety of layers, such as paperboard, wood, and plastic. It is also known in the art to prepare laminates of paperboard and polymer, such as the familiar restaurant menu comprised of a paperboard layer laminated with a thin layer of flexible plastic.
The fibrous sheet covered plywood disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,343,740 relates to plywood panels having broad faces covered with a resin-impregnated loosely matted pulp sheet integrally bonded to the plywood panel and presenting finished smooth surfaces on the panel. The integrally bonded pulp sheets provide a covering for imperfect surface veneers of plywood panels and mask imperfections thereon.
The composition board disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,083,743 discloses a cured thin sheet material comprising first and second fiber sheet materials bonded together to form an integral sheet which may then be bonded to a substrate material such as hardboard, plywood, natural wood, wallboard, or composition board and may be employed for use in furniture, countertops and wall surfaces.
A decorative laminated wall panel is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,552,792 and includes a center ply formed from a wood veneer, a back ply formed from a kraft liner board or paperboard and a face ply. A thin decorative paper is laminated to the face ply.
A decorative laminated structure having a core formed from several sheets of kraft paper impregnated with a blend of phenolic resin is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,801,198. The decorative laminated structure has a decorative sheet impregnated with melamine-formaldehyde resin and a translucent overlay sheet also impregnated with a melamine-formaldehyde resin. A bottom overlay sheet is also impregnated with melamine-formaldehyde resin and may be applied to the opposite side of the core.
Those systems, which disclose a variety of multi-layered composition board and panels, may be used in the construction of furniture, but those prior art articles do not provide for a smooth surface, free from imperfections, on which to adhere a decorative layer.